Lei—recognized internationally as an expert in operations scheduling, project resource allocation models, logistics performance optimization, and distribution network design—was the founding director of the Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management, in 2001, and established the Department of Supply Chain Management and Marketing Sciences as the founding chair, in 2008. She received multiple best professor awards at RBS and was nominated for the 2010 U.S. Professor of the Year Award. Lei became a faculty member at Rutgers in 1989.

The business school announced the creation of the George F. Farris Chair in Entrepreneurship in January 2014. Farris, who taught at RBS for 31 years, was the founding director of the Technology Management Research Center. The $3 million endowed faculty position is funded by a $1.5 million gift from the Celia Lipton Farris and Victor W. Farris Foundation, named after Farris’s aunt and uncle. The foundation’s gift was matched by a pledge from an anonymous donor.